People, pets and a plane
Chartered aircraft from Cayman Islands helps faithful companions get back home
It was dubbed the Noah’s Ark Project. The mission: getting Canadians and their pets home from the Cayman Islands. And getting pets left behind home to their owners.
Canadians were faced with a heartbreaking choice: get on a repatriation flight without their pets or miss the flight home.
“We were really stressed to see no flights available after that. There was a lot of fear and anxiety,” says Nikole Poirier, a Canadian living in the Cayman Islands. “It was really horrible,” she says of the choice they were forced to make.
“Many Canadians chose to stay, because they refused to leave their pets behind,” says Poirier.
When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, tourists and foreigners were given four days to pack up and get off the island.
The strict lockdown and government quarantine facilities resulted in few community transmissions of the virus and no Caymanian deaths.
Canadians were given 48 hours’ notice that the repatriation flight would be sent to bring them home. Poirier and many others stayed with their pets. Others left their pets in the care of friends.
“Packing up a household is not that easy,” says Poirier, who moved to the Cayman Islands six months ago to start a business.
Poirier, who owns a home in Haida Gwaii, worked for Parks Canada developing programs for the public to better enjoy the parks. She saw the opportunity to bring the Parks Canada model of public education to the Cayman Islands to help the coral reef ecology.